Skip to main content
Monthly Archives

April 2020

The trials and triumphs of staying at home

By Instagram, New ventures, Talking art

Here we are at the end of April all settled into our ‘staying at home’ routines. To ‘zoom’ has become as ubiquitous as to ‘google’ and 2kg dumbbells are probably selling on the black market for prices you’d normally associate with precious stones!!

I think I’ve finally mastered the art of the Instagram live. There have, however, most certainly been some technical hitches. I lost a couple of recordings and had to redo them without an ‘audience’ which was horrible. You might think it doesn’t make much difference as I can’t see anyone anyway and there’s even less interaction when I turn off comments, but I imagine you all in the room with me which is more of a boost than I can tell you.

The first hitch came about because the internet was properly rubbish and I kept cutting out which was irritating but I couldn’t do much else. The second was a killer because it was my fault… my camera memory was too full to save the recorded ‘live’ once it was finished. Imagine! You could say that I was unimpressed. It actually led to my only mini isolation meltdown to date. I can highly recommend the soothing qualities of a jigsaw in these situations. This one was a collage of photos from a beautiful holiday with some girlfriends from last year so every so often I’d find a piece of one of their gorgeous faces and get misty eyed all over again. But the jigsaw worked its magic – and kept me up until 2am.

Mistakes and meltdowns aside, the thing I love about human nature is the way we adapt. I can’t be the only one to have been wondering what the world will look like for the next few years. I’m guessing, for example, that I won’t just be able to waltz into the National Gallery with a group any time soon. I can’t really process this if I’m honest, but I’ve started to do the next best thing which has been to think about an online offering. It can’t just be about replacing a gallery tour, although I’m happy to get online with you and do that if you’d like me to, but I feel that it has to offer something a little bit quirky. I have a plan. It’s in gestation but I hope that by the time I’m writing my blog next month you’ll all know about it.

So, let’s keep on keeping on but allow ourselves to get excited about all the wonderful innovations that are blossoming because we’ve had to do things differently. It’s really rather inspiring when you get the technology right.

Instagram Live